I would like to tear certain traumatic memories out of my brain, like old garments on fire, and stamp on them until the burning and the sensation and the repetition of burning is extinguished. But trauma doesn’t work that way. The offences I can’t forgive or forget are nestled like baby reptiles in my blood, my nerves, my bones, my flesh. Recent research suggests why defeating traumatic memories is so difficult.

Grappling with PTSD from emotional and medical trauma, I search for support groups in my community but find none. Instead I bond with characters from outer space. I have followed the character of La’an Noonien Singh on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with interest, respect, and recognition. And La’an is not alone in being a survivor of trauma on the Enterprise. If only respect and understanding for trauma survivors arrived on Planet Earth, now, and not in a fantasy future.

Recovering from trauma, I use hatred not as a vehicle for hurting others, but as a vehicle for changing myself, for changing the world. Eventually, hatred will be displaced by joy and curiosity.

Invincibility. It doesn’t exist among humans, but I love invincibility as masquerade, as defensive strategy in cancer and trauma...

Having long been gaslighted by authority figures, I tend to gaslight myself, but I am done. Believing myself is healing, is health.

I shall close the long and gruesome history of gaslighting in my life with the following fact: my psychiatrist of almost 20 years lost...

Having recently cut all ties with my family of origin, I have moved from anger, shock, and loss to feelings of freedom, joy, and release....

The single lesson of decades of talk therapy was communicated to my husband by a naked, elder colleague in the close quarters of a men’s...